Mizuya

What a mizuya is

A mizuya is the preparation space attached to a Chashitsu, where bowls and kettles are washed and the utensils are set out before and after a gathering.

It adjoins the tea room directly. The Tamura Residence tea room in Kyoto, from the late Edo period, is described as having a service opening into the lean-to on its north side and a tiled preparation room projecting to the west.

It is sometimes the larger of the two spaces. The tea house at Chikushi Jogakuen in Fukuoka Prefecture, built in 1940, places a four-and-a-half-mat tea room to the north and a six-mat preparation room to the south, with a sunken brazier in the preparation room as well as in the tea room itself.

The Obaian in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, from the mid-Edo period, is described as an eight-mat room adjoining a three-mat tea room, with a service area and a preparation room behind them.

The same word in a farmhouse

The term is not confined to tea. The former Yoshida Residence in Chiba Prefecture, built in 1854, is recorded as an Important Cultural Property whose structure field lists a kitchen of 4.4 by 5.3 metres and a water room of 4.7 by 5.3 metres, both Kirizuma-zukuri with Sangawara-buki, each counted as a separate structure.

That building is not a tea preparation room but a place for cooking and water work. The same word covers two different things, and which one is meant depends on the setting.

When writing about a building, say which sense applies. Whether the record lists the room beside a tea room or beside a kitchen is the clue that settles it.